


Sailors

by midnightsnapdragon



Series: Nostalgia [16]
Category: Lunar Chronicles - Marissa Meyer
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fantasy AU, Nightmares, Shipwrecks, Sirens, Survivor Guilt, mermaid!Cress, siren!Cress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 20:00:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12043188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightsnapdragon/pseuds/midnightsnapdragon
Summary: In which Carswell Thorne finds land but remains haunted by the shipwreck and the siren song that claimed the lives of theArugula'screw. Nor can he forget the siren who, for some incomprehensible reason, spared his life. (The sequel toSirens.)





	Sailors

**i.**

In the disreputable opinion of Carswell Thorne, no island can truly be called civilized until it has a tavern. Or a bar. Actually, even a wine-tasting kiosk would do. Something, anything, to soothe the frayed psyche of a man who has met monsters face-to-face and barely survived.

It's a loud, messy, mead-soaked place; everything stinks of spilled ale and sweat. The crowd is not unusual or even interesting – the same ruddy-faced drunkards at the bar, the same bookkeepers and gamblers gathered around the card tables, the same smattering of fishermen and kale growers that can be found everywhere in this part of the land.

And in one shadowy corner, one lone sailor is going unnoticed. His fifth or sixth serving of mead sits on the table in front of him. He does not speak to anyone. Once, mere days ago, he would have wasted no time in getting intimately acquainted with every pretty girl in the room – he would have been surrounded by his fellow crewmates from the _Arugula._

But they aren't around anymore.

"Anythin' to drink, handsome?"

Thorne lifts his gaze from the dregs of his mug and his eyes fall on the pretty blonde waitress standing in front of him. One hand rests on her hip, the other balances a tray of drinks, and her cheerful smile shows a dimple in each cheek.

Despite himself, he can't help seeing a different face. Sweet and heart-shaped and deceptively innocent, that's the face he glimpses every time he closes his eyes … then he blinks and the vision fades, leaving only the waitress. Several men watch her impatiently from across the room, but she looks in no hurry to walk away.

"We've got tea, ale, mead – the honeyed stuff, if you want – and mulled wine if you've got the coin. What'll it be?"

"Another mead," he replies before he can second-guess himself. His table is already littered with mugs drained of their contents, but Thorne has a good head for alcohol, and he wants more than anything to forget the events of the past twenty-four hours.

The waitress gives a perky bob. "Sure thing! Hope you enjoy your stay at the Sweet Crescent Moon, sir -"

Thorne's head snaps up.

"– you'll find comfortable rooms waiting for you upstairs, where some other, more _personal_ services will be available, so just let us know. Anyway –"

"Wait."

The waitress breaks off, suddenly looking nervous. No doubt she thinks that Thorne is going to ask her about the "personal services" which she is clearly desperate not to outline in further detail.

Slowly, Thorne leans forward across the table. "Say that again."

She swallows. "Um. Well. It's, er … companionship, that sort of thing." A shaky laugh. "I'm sure you already know all about that, though, don't you, sir?"

"No," he says, narrowing his eyes, "before that. The – the name of this pub. What did you say it was called?"

"Oh!" The waitress relaxes, her natural smile returning. "It's the 'Sweet Crescent Moon'. You didn't see the sign?"

The words send a chill down his spine.

_Sweet Crescent Moon._

"Sir? You all right?"

A gray cliff towers above him. The ship tilts alarmingly beneath his feet. The music swells, and high winds are beating down, and all he can do is raise horrified eyes to the girl – what _looks_ like a girl – perched on the ship's railing, her predator's gaze fixed on him.

There's something sticky and salty on his cheeks. Sea spray, maybe?

"I'll just, um … I'll get your mead."

Thorne doesn't see her hurry away. It's another voice that echoes in his mind, bringing up a vivid memory of warm sand and a ragged blue dress fluttering in the breeze.

_My name is Crescent Moon._

**ii.**

The next morning, after a brief walk down to the quay, he turns down the street of the pub and finds that the waitress was right: a wooden crescent moon hangs over the doorway, carved with three little words.

Thorne shudders and hurries inside, shoulders curved, careful to duck his head lest the cursed symbol brush against him.

**iii.**

His grandmother warned him about the sirens.

All he ever learned about the sea, he learned from her. She had sailed across the world, once, in search of treasure, pretending to be a man so that no sailor's superstition would get in her way. She knew about ropes and knots, sails and rigging, anchors and currents, and navigation by the stars. Thorne sat on her knee and looked up at her with wide, wondering eyes, wanting nothing more than to be just like his Grandmother Elizabeth.

One night, when he had grown up a bit, she beckoned to him from across the glowing fireplace, a signal that had come to mean she had a story to tell. When he clambered onto her lap (as if he were still five years old), she lowered her voice and murmured, "Carswell, you asked me once about my shipwreck. I wanted to wait until you were old enough to understand. Listen closely now, because if you take to the sea as I think you will, you need to know what happened to me. It is very important that you know the truth."

Her somber tone frightened him, but the story she proceeded to tell would give him nightmares for years and years.

Ominous flickers of movement under the water. Ethereal voices. A flash of unnatural yellow eyes, a glimpse of pointed teeth, like needles, filling a too-wide mouth. Beautiful girls thronging around a collapsing, storm-beaten ship, and then converging upon it with the ravenous screams of vultures.

She was not gentle. She made no efforts to not scare him, because he needed to be properly scared to understand. Little nine-year-old Thorne was shaking by the time Grandma Eliza got to the end: she, the sole woman, had been the only one immune to the siren song, the only one to swim away and find land.

"The south sea, Carswell, remember that. Every sea has its monsters, but not everyone encounters them. Most people don't believe. You have to trust me: if you think you're hearing music when you shouldn't, or if a storm comes on that seems unnatural to you, plug your ears with candle-wax and swim as fast as you can."

In the years to come, he tried to convince himself that he didn't need to take his grandmother's story seriously, that he would never meet a siren – it was just a frightening myth. But for all his teenage arrogance, he remembered every word she'd ever told him. And it saved his life in the end.

Thorne left home at age sixteen to learn how to sail a ship. At eighteen, he found a home with the crew of the _Arugula,_ and eventually came to know the other sailors as well as he knew himself. They all had strengths and flaws and dreams, heartaches and happiness, plans for the future or none whatsoever – bachelors, husbands, lovers, taking to the sea for adventure or for duty.

They were good men. They didn't deserve the fate they got. And, by some twisted act of karma, neither did Thorne.

It wasn't that he was especially amoral. He knew right from wrong. He didn't swindle or cheat, and he wasn't the kind of person who would blame another for his own crime. But in the little matters, he didn't care who he hurt. When they came ashore, he would find a pretty girl, flirt with her, romance her, and leave – even if it broke her heart. What did it matter, if he didn't love her back? All he wanted was some fun. Promises were flexible.

And he was selfish. When a crewmate went overboard during a storm, Thorne had been standing closest to him, but he didn't tie a rope around his own waist and dive after the drowning man. When a rowboat of scouts was sent ahead to a mist-shrouded island, he didn't volunteer – if they wanted to get eaten by lagoon sharks, he thought, why not let them? Thorne's first love was himself. He knew it, his friends knew it, and their ties to each other were all the weaker for it.

How ironic, that it was only after the sirens, after the sailors of the _Arugula_ were all gone, that Thorne wished he could have given his life for theirs.

**iv.**

Some memories are jumbled, indistinct. Some are lost to the murky swamps of the mind, either too long ago or too inconsequential to remember. Some are preserved as snapshots and flashes; small, fleeting scraps of the life you've lived. Then there are the memories that are as sharp and cruel as the cut of a knife: they blaze at the forefront of the mind, lighting your way, or else casting a shadow; they keep you awake and tear you apart. And the one that plagues Carswell Thorne is exactly like that: it has a terrible, haunting presence of its own.

Dark cliffs looming over the ship.

The muffled silence in his ears, stuffed with candle-wax.

Complete mayhem on the deck of the ship, as the sailors yell wordlessly, shove each other, tripping and tumbling, all but throwing themselves overboard.

And then –

Dreading what he will see, Thorne cranes his neck –

And there on the clifftop, lined up in an arrowhead, are the sirens. Green-blue skirts whip around them. They raise their arms like summoning the wind. Their mouths are open horribly wide, and their expressions are black, bottomless hunger, something insane and broken in their faces, _inhuman._

They are the storm. They are the worst fate that could befall a sailor.

Death has closed its fist around the _Arugula._

Thorne stands frozen, staring up at the sirens' distant figures, and starts to shudder. His grandmother's warnings echo in the back of his mind. He tears his gaze away, everything in him screaming with fear, and sprints across the deck. He'll jump and then he'll swim, as fast as the treacherous water can carry him.

He stretches out a hand to grab the railing

and blinks awake

and finds himself standing in a dark room, the wooden floorboards cold beneath his feet.

A derelict cot is pressed into one corner. A pair of borrowed, threadbare shoes lie beneath it, barely visible in the gloom. Thorne stands with his hand outstretched toward the window. He must have been about to undo the latch.

For a moment it's all he can do not to stagger with vertigo.

The sea spray is gone, the sirens are gone. Night has wrapped this little village in sleepy silence.

Heart still pounding, Thorne goes ahead and opens the window, hoping that fresh air will clear his head. _The nightmares will stop,_ he tells himself firmly, trying to gather the scraps of his self-confidence. _Once you find a way out of here, you can forget all about … you can forget._

But as soon as the wooden pane swings out, the breath chokes in his throat. Even through the mess of rooftops and streets visible from the window, he can see a small pocket of black ocean winking in the moonlight.

He wants to hide under the bed like a child. _Close the window,_ he commands himself, but the order is lost to a song suddenly creeping through his head, a song he could swear he's never heard before.

… _forget all the world,_ croons a sweet voice, as the distant water ripples through the harbour. _Dream a little dream of your heart's desire._

How can this be? He didn't hear them sing. If he had, he'd be dead, his broken body devoured or at the bottom of the sea. And yet, the music tiptoes through his head and settles in the corners, and Thorne doesn't have to know where it comes from, to realise that it is not going to leave.

… _away with the nightmares and your darkest hour_ …

He shuts his eyes tight.

**v.**

It happens again two nights later. Again and again and again, he wakes up on his feet with a hammering heart, always facing the window. Usually it's closed, allowing him to stagger back to his cot. Sometimes it's already half-open and he has to slam it shut as soon as he realises what he's doing. Once – just once – Thorne opens his eyes to find himself leaning through the frame, face turned toward the harbour, a breeze ruffling his hair.

As if the dreams want him to throw himself into the sea.

Phantom tunes weave into his sleep and leave him with dark circles under his eyes. Waking up every morning is a terrible relief. Thorne spends his daylight hours walking the cobblestone roads of the village where he has ended up, exploring shops and street-markets, about as far from the docks and the smell of salt as he can get. His nights are whiled away in the tavern of the inn, gambling and chatting up the barmaids, idling there as long as he can before they close down and he is forced to return to his room upstairs. Back to the nightmares.

He dreads sleep now, but the only alternative is heading outside and wandering by the light of the moon, and Thorne will knaw off a hand before doing that. Some part of him fears that without the lively crowd and protective sunshine, there will be nothing to stop him giving himself to the ocean – that the music will lead him down to the water and he'll be powerless to resist.

He's always been a coward, hasn't he?

He can hardly recognize himself. There are the physical changes – his gaunt face, the stubble on his chin that he forgets whenever he looks away from the mirror – and there are the fears that hover at his shoulder, things he used to enjoy that bring him no pleasure now. The flirtatious charm that used to come so naturally has gone. No one catches his interest; it makes no difference to him whether he has someone to warm his bed. He can't bring himself to come near the beach, let alone touch seawater. He doesn't even have the heart to play cards anymore.

Thorne was once carefree, but how can that happen now, when the eerie strains of siren song follow him wherever he goes?

**vi.**

_… dream a little dream of your heart's desire_  
_and forget all the world, for here is your place_  
_Away with the nightmares and your darkest hour_  
_Come and be happy till the end of your days_ …

**vii.**

"You know," someone remarks one evening, "if you don't have a ship, the _Rampion_ is making her maiden voyage the day after tomorrow."

Thorne looks up from his ale with clouded eyes, the world blurred in front of him. A man stands in front of his table – tall and dark, with a splash of lime near his head – but Thorne can't make out any features. His head is full of drink.

"What're you talking about?" he mumbles.

The man swings around a chair from a nearby unoccupied table and takes a seat across from Thorne. "I know a lost sailor when I see one," he says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Take to the water again. Your place isn't here, drinking yourself to oblivion. It's out there."

Thorne shakes his head quickly. "Can't. They'll get me."

"Who?"

 _The sirens, the sirens._ Who else? Doesn't he _know?_ The sirens are everywhere now, their voices flooding the air above the land, calling to him across the water, their faces all around him, the phantom brush of fingers against his ankle. But that's not the worst of it, oh no. There's one ghost that won't leave him alone – the ghost that he hates most particularly, because he doesn't know if he should be afraid of her or not, doesn't know if it's wrong to see her face in his dreams as much as he does.

 _Sweet crescent moon, up in the sky._ The song whirls through his head. _You sing your song so sweetly_ …

The man's low voice breaks through the spell. "What is it? Who are you afraid of?"

"Them," whispers Thorne. "They sing. They were so beautiful. One of them came close but she let me go." Not until he says the words aloud does he realize how much that's been bothering him, clawing at him from the inside out. He raises pleading eyes to the man who's joined him. _"Why would she let me go?"_

"Crescent!"

The harsh squawk makes Thorne jump, and his first panicked thought is that he's never said her name out loud – has he?

"That's right, Boots," says the man, a touch of laughter in his words. "We're at the Sweet Crescent Moon." He addresses Thorne again. "Meet my macaw, Boots. She's quite intelligent."

A parrot. Of course. The bright green splotch by the man's shoulder begins to take on the defined shape of a bird. Thorne relaxes slightly. Green is for plant life and trees. Green is for _earth._ No seawater there.

"Linh Garan," offers the man, stretching out a hand.

"Thorne." It takes him a moment to recall what he usually says next. "Carswell Thorne."

"Well, Carswell Thorne, I'm going to tell you something. I have a ship sailing out of harbour tomorrow evening, and if you join the crew, I'll share a little secret with you."

"What ship?"

"The _Rampion._ Headed for the Silver Isles."

Thorne draws back. "But isn't that …?"

"The lost Blackburn kingdom, yes." Linh Garan fiddles with his glass, a peculiar smile playing about his lips. "Abandoned since the disappearance of Channary Blackburn and her infant daughter. You've heard of it, I imagine."

A nervous chill traipses down Thorne's spine. He's heard of it, all right. Everyone has. But to mention those cursed islands is to bring bad luck on yourself, and the last crew that attempted to sail there … well, no one knows exactly what happened to them. Some say the ship became a ghost, doomed to sail the seas forever. Others say it was pulled down by a kraken. A few even claim that it just vanished into a strange mist one day and was never seen again.

Now it seems that Thorne is invited to take part in the same crazy expedition. The fog in his brain isn't helping. "You want me to join your crew?" he repeats, slurring a little, just to make sure he's got it correctly.

"That's right." A moment of silence passes before Garan adds, as if he can see Thorne's doubt, "I am on a quest, you see. I'm looking for something very specific, something precious. And I can see that you're dying to find your sea legs again."

Thorne shakes his head. "No, I can't go back."

"Whyever not?" Garan says impatiently.

"They _sing_ …"

The man eyes him speculatively. Then, all at once, understanding dawns on his face. "You've seen the sirens?"

Thorne's eyes bulge and he shushes Garan frantically, but none of the dwindling crowd seem to have heard.

"Tell me, what were they like?" Garan's expression is one of unabashed curiosity, bordering on fascination. He lowers his voice and scoots closer to the table. "Did you hear them? No, you wouldn't have, you wouldn't be here otherwise. But what did they _look_ like?"

Thorne swallows and stares into his glass. The memory of the sirens is pressed suffocatingly close to his chest. Would talking about it make the whole ghastly ordeal any less awful?

"They were beautiful, but … unnatural," he manages. "The most horrible things I've ever seen. Like demons … I don't know if they could even think or talk. They just sang everyone to death." He can't restrain a shudder.

_Creatures of nightmare, all of them._

_Except her._

He fights the thought. He tries not to believe it. But at heart, he probably accepted it a long time ago.

_Except Crescent Moon._

Garan seems intrigued, but apparently decides not to force the point. "The treasure I'm looking for," he says under his breath, "is dangerous, and priceless, and it hasn't been seen for at least twenty years. If we fail, we face certain death. But if we find it …"

His eyes have lit up with the kind of adventurous spirit that Thorne recognizes from a lifetime of gazing into mirrors. It's tempting, so tempting – to be part of a sailing crew again, seek glory, to be where he was always meant to be.

But he can't forget what waits for him out on the water. "The sirens, they –"

"Will you let them rule your head?" Garan demands. "Let them cloud your judgement and keep you from your destiny?" He leans forward, and his tone becomes deadly serious. "You need to face your demons, Carswell Thorne. Come back to sea with me and find them. Otherwise … sooner or later, they'll find you first."

Thorne clenches the empty glass of ale to stop his fingers from trembling.

His point made, Garan stands from the table and tips his hat to him. "Join the _Rampion,"_ he reiterates, quietly enough that they won't be overheard. "We'll make good partners, you and I."

"I could just leave this place and never come back," Thorne mumbles, unwilling to concede.

"But you won't," says Garan with a knowing smile, "because I have something you need."

He tries to muster a glare, but it's difficult with his head full of alcohol. "And what's that?"

"A purpose."

**viii.**

_Come back to sea with me and find them … or they'll find you first._

Thorne sits on his small cot and tilts his face into the breeze drifting through the open window. A red disk of sun is sinking below the horizon, its light turning the harbour water to flame.

The black outline of a schooner lingers on the edge of sight.

He may be a coward, and he may value his own life above almost anything else, but he would rather die a sailor than lead this empty existence on land, waiting for the nightmares to drive him insane. Whatever freedom he had before, he lost it the moment he laid eyes on the sirens, and he's been in their grip long after he left that terrible cliff behind.

Unbidden, he remembers his encounter with the one who followed him. How she'd just stood there, watching him, without the slightest hint of monstrous hunger in her sweet face. The others had been ethereally beautiful, but not her. She was just sort of pretty.

_Sing for me, why don't you?_

_I can't._

Thorne hadn't let himself think about her. Every day, he felt the cruel irony of his survival: every last one of the _Arugula's_ crew had drowned or been killed, but _he_ was to be spared – the egoist, the thief, the one man who maybe didn't deserve to live. But to think that, to top it all off, he'd been spared by a siren, that he'd somehow gotten away with the one who happened to _not_ want to kill him … he'd never despised his own luck so much. He nearly drove himself mad trying to reconcile the image of the howling monsters atop that cliff with a girl who had stood uncertainly before him and struggled for words.

Maybe the sirens had put a spell on him somehow after all. Maybe all it takes is one look for a man to lose his mind. Maybe the music will possess him when he rows out to sea and he'll end up drowning anyway.

But the risk would be worth it.

She'd allowed him to walk away, but he doesn't want to live carrying the weight of her kindness. Some days it feels like her name is his curse. And if this is the way to shake off that curse, so be it.

He's done letting his memories rule him.

**ix.**

The sun has disappeared beneath the horizon by the time Thorne leaves the Sweet Crescent Moon. Fire is smeared across the sky, fading overhead to a deep indigo where a single star winks to life. A few people bunch together on the streets, but most have gone inside by now.

Thorne approaches the harbour with slow but determined steps. When he emerges from between two buildings and finds himself in full view of the sea, with nothing between him and the water … he half-expects something in his mind to snap, for his limbs to disobey his mind and walk him into the deep, but nothing happens. Hope rises in his chest. Maybe all his fears were for nothing – maybe the sirens have no real power over him except what he _thought_ they had.

Stars above, why had he waited so long to come back to sea? For the first time in weeks, he feels … okay. He feels _better,_ anyhow.

And there – lingering on the shadowy water – is the _Rampion,_ just within rowing distance.

Waiting for him.

The harbour is almost empty now, only a few fishermen mucking about with their lines down at the other end. It's the easiest thing in the world for Thorne to walk up to a little rowboat like he owns it, undo a few knots, and step inside.

(If he's going to go looking for dangerous treasure, he might as well start by hijacking some poor sap's boat. Something tells him that Linh Garan's little quest isn't the honourable crown-sanctioned kind.)

Thorne picks up the paddles and starts to row, back and forth, settling into a comfortable rhythm. Water laps quietly against the wooden sides of the boat. His nerves are tingling, his blood thrumming with excitement and fear, like the first time he climbed to the crow's nest with no one to catch him if he fell.

 _I'm really going back,_ he thinks, arms already aching. He's out of practice, but stars, does it ever feel good to be on sea legs again. _I'm back in the water and nothing is going to happen. Nothing is going to stop me._

Thorne glances over his shoulder. The _Rampion_ is closer now. Garan must have anchored it just outside the harbour –

"You shouldn't leave the land," says a soft voice.

Thorne gives a yell of alarm and whirls around. The paddles clatter into the boat, but it isn't half a heartbeat before he's snatching one up and brandishing it like a spear into the face of the creature who'd spoken – and when Thorne's brain catches up with what he sees, his breath rushes out all at once, like the wind has been knocked out of him.

She looks like a human girl treading water, with damp blond hair plastered to her cheeks and a sweet heart-shaped face. Her bare shoulders peek out from the water. And her eyes – bright blue, like chips of sky. If he didn't know better – if he'd still been the old Carswell Thorne – he might have found himself _considering_ her, might have decided to give her a smoulder and see where it took them both.

But the old Carswell Thorne drowned with the _Arugula,_ and this one knows better than to think this creature is anything less than a monster.

Silence stretches out between them. She just blinks at him from the other end of the paddle.

_It's her, it's her, it's her._

"You," he breathes.

The siren gives him an appraising look, and asks uncertainly, "You remember me?"

Her name has been on Thorne's tongue for so long that it's almost a relief to return it to her, let it come back full circle. "Crescent Moon," he says.

Surprise flickers over her face, like she hadn't really expected him to recall what she'd so willingly given. He almost laughs. How could he have forgotten – how could it not have mattered? Knowing her name tied them together. He couldn't have blotted it out if he'd tried.

And stars above, he'd tried.

"What are you doing here?" he growls, lifting the paddle higher.

Crescent glances down. He can't tell if it's a nervous tic or if she's worried about the other things swimming around in this water, other things that could be watching. Then she looks back up at him, biting her lip.

His voice rises. "Why won't you leave me alone?"

"Listen," she says quietly, drifting near the boat. "You can't go back to sea."

"Excuse me?"

"You heard the song," she insists. "You evaded the ocean. If you leave the land, we will claim you. It's only a matter of time."

Thorne narrows his eyes at her. And says, enunciating carefully, _"I didn't hear the song."_

Crescent just gives him a sad look. "It might not matter."

He stares at her, incredulous. Could the man-eater be genuinely warning him?

There are so many things he wants to say to her right now. What did she mean, he'd evaded the ocean? Evaded death, maybe. That doesn't mean he's destined to die at a siren's hands. And why would her sisters bother to come after him especially? Why was she even telling him this?

But none of that matters, not really. There's only one question he needs answered, one that's been eating at his sanity ever since he washed up on that wretched beach.

Inch by inch, keeping his eyes on her, Thorne lowers the paddle.

"Why," he says in a steady low voice, the whole world silent but for the lap of water against the rowboat, "did you let me go?"

Crescent presses her lips together. When she speaks, it could have been the wind or the water.

"I don't know."

He snarls, a vicious twist of the mouth. _"Why did you let me live?"_

"I don't _know,"_ she repeats, louder this time.

"Why not Julian, hmm? He was a good man, much better than I could ever be. If anyone deserved to live, it was him." Thorne's grip on the paddle tightens until his knuckles go white. He's rambling, but he doesn't care. He needs to say this to her face. "What about Liam? He was annoying and he smiled too much, but he had plans. He wanted to find a sweetheart he'd left behind somewhere. And I bet she wanted to find him, too."

Crescent grimaces and presses her hands to her head, as if trying to keep out something unpleasant. But Thorne has no sympathy for her. She personifies every sleepless night, every crazed nightmare, the shiver he succumbed to whenever he laid eyes on that stupid tavern sign. He might never be able to face the true monsters, but he can strike back at her.

As far as he's concerned, she is the _Arugula's_ killer.

"And Kit had a wife waiting for him," he goes on, nearly shouting now. "She was with child, for stars' sake! What about –"

Crescent screws her eyes shut and shrieks, "Because they were already dead!"

Thorne flinches, the words dying in his mouth, as her shrill cry echoes around the harbour. A few seagulls erupt from their perches in alarm.

The siren opens her eyes, and for a moment they blaze with anger, like some battle is raging behind her pale face; her lips part and he catches a glimpse of needle-sharp teeth.

And then the anger and the teeth disappear, and Crescent looks away as if horrified by her own outburst.

It is all too easy to forget that she's the deadliest thing he's ever met. To forget that he has already cheated death once – cheated the sirens – and that he should never test his miraculous luck again.

Without a word, Thorne picks up the paddle. Crescent watches him lift it and point it at her, and he doesn't think he's imagining the hurt on her face. But how could he possibly tell what’s real and what was illusion with this creature?

"I don't know," she whispers a third time, eyes downcast. "I just followed you from the ship … I thought I'd have you. But I decided not to. I was curious … And you were so angry."

He sneers. "And you're used to your food not talking back to you, yes?"

It's her turn to flinch, as if he'd slapped her.

What's wrong with this siren? She's soft-hearted, he thinks scornfully. How dare she be soft of heart?

How dare she make an exception of him?

"You have to understand," Crescent pleads, not trying to keep her voice down anymore. "You're only alive because you saved yourself _before_ I spared you. The others were already under our spell. They were as good as dead!"

"I don't care," he spits. _I don't care that you spared my life. I don't care that my friends were lost before the ship even broke down. I don't care that you sound like you have a heart._ He takes up the second paddle and starts to row again, as much to get away from her as to reach the _Rampion._ "I'm going."

"No, wait – please –"

In the blink of an eye, she materializes in the water by his side and he feels a cold, wet hand sliding up his wrist. A chill shoots through his skin. With a sharp gasp, he yanks his hand away, and the paddle slips from his fingers and falls over the side of the boat.

Crescent manages to catch it before he even realises what's happened. She holds it out to him like a peace offering.

He stares at her warily, every voice of reason insisting that this is a predator, that any moment he might be grabbed and pulled underwater. But she's hesitating, too, unsure of how she'll be received.

Without making a conscious decision to do it, Thorne stretches out a hand and wraps it around the wooden handle.

She doesn't let him pull away. "Tell me your name."

 _Loneliness,_ he thinks with a twinge of surprise, and tugs harder. "Give it back." But Crescent doesn't budge an inch, just stares up at him with sincere blue eyes.

What possesses him to tell her? The knowledge that she might very well hang on to the paddle until he gives up? A petty desire for his name to haunt her, just as hers had haunted him? Or was it the part of him – however small – that looked at the siren and saw something else, something gentle, something almost human?

He exhales with reluctance. "Thorne. Carswell Thorne."

Crescent nods and lets him take the paddle. He slips it back into the water, knowing somehow that this is the moment for them to part ways again, that she won't keep him any longer. And yet – yet now it's his turn to hesitate. He searches her face, trying to perceive her thoughts, trying to understand why she'd come to warn him, why she would even care.

It's a moment longer before he realises he's completely forgotten about the waiting _Rampion._

"Why aren't you eating me?" he asks, breaking the silence.

A distant smile touches her lips. "I haven't eaten anyone since your shipwreck."

Thorne frowns. _That's not an answer. Is it?_ Three weeks have passed since the Arugula was destroyed. He has no idea how often a siren is supposed to feed, but the way she says it makes him wonder if there's something more to it than a lack of hunger.

Seeing the look on his face, she lowers her eyes, shaking her head slightly. "What does that make me?" she murmurs, almost to herself.

He opens his mouth – to say what, he doesn't know – but cuts himself off. There is nothing more to say.

"Row quickly," Crescent whispers, turning away. "And stay away from the south."

The siren disappears with a faint _gulp_ of water, and just like that, he is alone again on the harbour.

The sky has darkened to purple, only a faint hint of gold near the horizon. Dazed, he starts to row again, settling into a familiar rhythm that takes him fast across the water. The last few minutes seem like a trick of the imagination. Surely, he couldn't really have spoken to his ghost again?

No. He won't think about her just yet. Right now, there's treasure out there waiting for him.

Thorne manoeuvres the boat around so that he can row facing the open sea. Night is falling fast, but if he squints, he can just make out a man waving down to him from the _Rampion's_ starboard side, the shadow of a green macaw on his shoulder.


End file.
